I attended a memorial service on Sunday for someone I've not met because I wanted to make a connection with her one more time. Earlier this year, I was reading "Voices of the Second Wave", the bittersweet stories of 35 people from this "second wave" generation of Chinese Americans in the Greater Seattle area, who tell about their lives in their own voices. I found Joan Tai's story and her support for NAMI (National Alliance for Mental Illness) Eastsideespecially moving and decided to call her for a quick chat.

I found her compassionate, intelligent, and generous with her time, as we talked well over an hour. I then suggested that we should meet after the lunar Chinese New Year when she might have more time, as I wanted to share with her about Traditional Chinese Medicine and how much good it could do for mental health and our immune system. I'm sorry that time never came and know now that she was stricken some time in March with Acute Myeloid Leukemia that quickly wiped out her immune system. As an acupuncturist and herbalist, I want to dedicate this blog to her and I plan to try as hard as I could to make a tight connection between mental illness, such as anxiety, depression, and PTSD to our body's immune system.

At the core of the mind-body medicine is the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis, the area where our thoughts meet our immune, nervous and hormonal systems. Our negative thoughts could trigger fear, anger, and despair that are highly emotionally charged to cause anxiety, depression, and PTSD. If left untreated, they could turn chronic and become trapped further.

Stress is the body’s reaction to any stimuli that disturbs its equilibrium. When the equilibrium of various hormones is altered the effect of these changes can be detrimental to the immune system. Stress affects the immune system in many ways. The immune system protects the body from viruses, bacteria, and anything that is different or that the body does not recognize. The immune system sees these as intruders and it sends messages to attack. But they also are the immune system's communicator in telling the brain that the body is ill. When an individual is stressed or going through a stressful experience the immune system starts to produce natural killer cells and cytokines. When levels of cytokines are higher they combat infections and therefore the brain gets communicated that the body is ill and it produces symptoms as if the individual was ill. These symptoms include fever, sleepiness, lack of energy, no appetite, and basically flu like symptoms. These symptoms mean the body is fighting the illness or virus. This is useful for when the body goes through the stress from an injury. But the body could evolve to do this process during stressful events such as taking exams, fighting in the battle fields, or even going through a life changing event such as a new job, the birth of a child, a death of a family member or a divorce.

Acupuncture, herbal medicine, dietary and lifestyle consultation are proven ways to moderate stress, and any of the above mentioned symptoms by the ability to regulate our given immune system up or down. Patients leave my clinic feeling as if a heavy burden had been lifted, or a ton of old garbage had been dumped with a sense of renewal and confidence! I wish more people could know about the wonders of this medicine.

I think Joan's flying high up somewhere, happy for a less burdened world!